LNG: the next energy battle line.

• Author: Eytchison, Patrick
• Position: Liquefied natural gas

The United States derives 23% of its consumed energy from natural gas, and an increase to 28% is expected by 2020. Presently, 85% of US consumption is from domestic wells, with a little less than 15% piped from Canada. Only a fraction of a percent comes from liquefied natural gas (LNG), imported by ocean tankers. Today, however, this pattern is changing. Domestic wells are showing production decline. New finds are smaller and rapidly depleted. Obviously, from a ruling class point of view, the answer is to import more natural gas, just as 63% of US oil is now imported. An alternate solution through conservation, life-style change, and conversion to wind/solar energy is unacceptable to the ruling class. In a July 10, 2003 statement to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Alan Greenspan said, "As the technology of LNG liquefaction [sic] and shipping has improved, and as safety considerations have lessened, a major expansion of US import capability appears to be underway." A flurry of corporate proposals for new US LNG port terminals has surfaced, many for the West Coast where no such facilities now exist. An Institute of the Americas' conference held in La Jolla, California on January 29-30, 2004, considered a "boom in liquefied natural gas consumption in the United States, Mexico and Canada" (The Washington Times).

As Greenspan alluded, safety is a primary concern with LNG terminals. Liquefied natural gas is both super-cooled to -260[degrees] F and compressed to 1/600 of its gaseous volume. It is then placed in tankers as long as three football fields (there are presently 130 ships in the LNG fleet with 50 more on order) and stored in holding tanks which may be as tall as a 15-story building. Mass amounts of such flammable methane under pressure are a first class hazard for any community. The LNG industry touts the "safeness" of LNG but defines an LNG "accident" in the narrowest of terms: the ignition of a massive quantity of stored LNG. In Cleveland, Ohio, in 1944, a leak from the first US LNG facility and the resulting fires killed 128 people. No further LNG construction took place in the US until the 1970s under the impact of OPEC.

LNG vapors ignite at 500[degrees]F at a gas-to-air mixture in the range of 5-15%. In the case of such an event, a low hanging vapor cloud could burn at a thermal temperature capable of producing second-degree burns within a two-mile radius. A study by the Oxnard, CA, City Council in 1977 found...